June 16th, 2010

BIG PICTURE: Even in the midst of very cool stuff (like Kellie’s graduation) there is a flatness. The weather may contribute…but that’s not all of it. I am at my core unsettled – dissatisfied or perhaps just restless. The big difference is that it’s not toxic, I don’t see it as a moral or character issue so there is very little impulse to “act out” in it. It just is. It will change again. I am feeling like turning this restlessness into something big and creative. I’m thinking that I‘ll take a shot at “the book” during the last two weeks of sabbatical. We’ll see what Rick thinks. I have a blended idea that would combine some of my already completed writing and the novel idea I’ve been kicking around. It could REALLY suck. But I guess I’m getting to the point where it doesn’t matter.

CLASSWORK: Done. 🙂 Waiting on grades for O.T. Theology and of course I’ll have to wait for grades on this Hermeneutics class (I take the last test in THAT tomorrow) but then I’m done. I have no idea what happens after that.

READ/RITE/REFLECT; THE SILENCE OF THE HEART: Still hating. This segment covered “gifts” roughly translated into Orthodoxy as “Spiritual Gifts” and “Character” combined. Once again, the author espouses principles I can’t argue with. Things like embracing the gifts you have, not judging them, giving them BACK for the greater good, etc. But doctrine aside for a moment, he returns to his theme of “trust yourself” or “forgive yourself” or “honor yourself”, everything begins with SELF. It’s like he has a very childish philosophy. It’s immature. Ironically the appearance of most new-age stuff like this is highly mature. It sounds fully developed and sophisticated, but it’s not. It’s the opposite. And so in a sense there are very BASIC truths in this stuff – stuff a 2 year old can get and NEEDS to get…but we have to move on. The Hermeneutics text talks of “progressive revelation” in scripture, where the progress is not from error to truth, but from incomplete to complete. I think I hear in this book, the echoes of an incomplete theology that has been resurrected and now because it was MEANT to be developed yet has been reanimated in it’s immature state and elevated to the appearance of complete – it takes on horror show characteristics:

The Wes Craven version would be a days old infant that was experimented on is such a way that it grew in overall size to 14 feet long, but maintained it’s same proportions, intelligence and capacities. Imagine that. The sound of the cries, the diaper issue, how to feed it!? Horror show. But given the courage to look deeply at it, one might still recognize the traits of a human infant. Maybe there is even potential to understand the most basic workings of human development because of this freakish situation – thus , Alick can come away from it saying, “I was instructed.”